Bad News For Fallujah
By Paul McGeough
04 November, 2004
The AgeThe people of Fallujah can expect to be the first in the Middle East to whom a reaffirmed President George Bush reaches out - it will be with guns and bombs.An unlikely win by the Democrat John Kerry would be a line in the sand, a chance to put aside the debilitating blame game over the mess that Iraq has become. Instead, the US in a second Bush term will have to soldier on, with much of the world continuing to refuse the meaningful assistance that might dig the President out of a hole he dug for himself.
A win is a win is a win. But as a referendum on Iraq and the war on terror, Bush's margin in the popular vote is narrow, particularly when compared to the levels of support he enjoyed in the days after September 11.
That will not stop Bush and the neo-conservatives claiming vindication - and probably it will fuel even more zealous efforts to shape outcomes according to their unilateralist, America-knows-best view of a terror-stressed world.
The massive explosives theft in Iraq, the bulk of which may be in the hands of insurgents and terrorists now; and of the revelation by Bush's Christian supporter Pat Robertson that the President had predicted before the Iraq invasion that he would not lose a single American life, had me thinking Kerry might fall over the line.
That went out the window when Osama bin Laden voted for the enemy he wants - President Bush - with his very deliberate and calculated intervention in the campaign. On the strength of Bush's claim of victory last night, Fallujah needs to brace itself; Tehran should tread carefully.
Iraq is the intractable problem we know - and Bush is likely to authorise a full-scale US attack on insurgents holding Fallujah in a matter of days. But imposing a secure environment in Iraq will remain fraught - a well-organised, mobile, funded and equipped network is in place and, the planned assault on Fallujah notwithstanding, elections scheduled for January are unlikely to proceed.
Tehran's nuclear ambition and how Washington and Israel deal with it is the next crisis we face. The Iranian view seems to be that their program is sufficiently advanced for them to be deemed to be a nuclear power, even though weapons are estimated to be years off.
Bush has so damaged US credibility that the most powerful nation in the world is the most hated. Despite European efforts to keep Iran in a diplomatic channel, brinkmanship will likely drive the issue to a US push for sanctions.
Rallying support for sanctions against Iran will be difficult, and the likelihood is that the US will take a leaf out of Israel's book - in 1981 Israel bombed a single reactor in Iraq.
The Iranian program has as many as 40 key sites, making it a complex target. Despite that, strike plans are being discussed within the Bush Administration and egged on by Israel. The only option for Washington will be a resort to the policy that got it into so much trouble in Iraq - a pre-emptive military strike and all its negative implications for the US in the Muslim world.
In the meantime Osama bin Laden, the man that New York Post headlines refers to as "Rat", is presumed to be in the mountains that straddle the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, having signalled so clearly to the world last week that while the US is bogged down in Iraq, the No.1 bogyman in the war on terror is alive and well.
Bush's adviser Karen Hughes said a re-elected Bush would work hard as a president for all Americans. Judging on his performance in the last four years, that means another difficult term in international affairs.
If the Bush claim of victory holds, it means the so-called leader of the Western world will continue in his role as ventriloquist's doll for a neoconservative band that will claim on the strength of the popular vote that they should be allowed to slip the leash.
Copyright © 2004. The Age Company Ltd.
